Thursday, November 5, 2015

farewell to inktober aliens and three bouquets for illustration friday

I had fun with inktober,
a month long challenge to draw with ink every day. The last three days of the month, I decided to draw aliens experiencing Halloween for the first time. Since there were three days of aliens, I brought back the themes for my first three weeks of inktober: ghosts, witch cats, and pumpkins.

Note: I still didn't have access to a scanner, so these are all cell pics (thus the shiny glare on the pictures).

Aliens and ghost adventure:

Aliens going for a broom ride with a witch cat:

Aliens encountering a pumpkin for the first time:

I also did a drawing today for the Illustration Friday prompt this week (bouquet). Today is a foggy day outside, so I decided to draw a bouquet of sunshine. It's also National Doughnut Day, so a bouquet of doughnuts sounded like a good idea. Couldn't resist drawing a bouquet of birthday cupcakes too!

Here's a close up of the sunshine bouquet.

They're all smiling, even the cloud! Except for the not so sunshiny one on the left. There's always one in every crowd! But that's okay. You can't be happy all the time, and maybe that one will be sunshiny tomorrow (hoping our weather will be sunny tomorrow too ... though I do enjoy a foggy day like today once in a while).

If inktober and Illustration Friday have taught me anything, it's that doodling and making art just for fun are really important (at least for me). It may not all be portfolio ready art, but it's fun and it allows me to experiment with new techniques and mediums. I don't do that when I'm making art for a project or my portfolio, but sometimes the doodles and experiments lead to new projects or portfolio pieces. No matter what, it stretches my creativity and makes me smile (although sometimes it also makes me cringe, if it doesn't turn out).

Author/illustrator Stephanie Ruble has been making art ever since she could hold a crayon, and making up stories since she learned to talk. She's currently working on new picture books, images for her portfolio, and drawing art for unusual holidays. Thanks for visiting!
Picture Book: Ewe and Aye written by Candace Ryan, Illustrated by Stephanie Ruble - in bookstores now.